


hold my words, keep us together

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Canon, Stargazing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:50:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7670764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You come out here often?” Keith says, eyes tracing over the stars above them.</p>
<p>He can practically feel Shiro smiling. “Yeah, actually,” he says. “It’s nice here. Quiet, when you want to get away from everything for a while.”</p>
<p>For the briefest of moments, Keith lets himself envision Shiro sitting here alone, staring at faraway galaxies. Would he dream of different worlds? Would he wonder what he might find at the edge of the universe? Or would he just let the silence soak him up, in his thoughts and in the world around him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold my words, keep us together

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively: stargazing brings Keith and Shiro together, before and after Kerberos.
> 
> Apparently I am incapable of writing anything other than a few very cliched, very sappy tropes. Sorry not sorry.
> 
> Thank you muchly to [Lydia](http://boxesfullofthoughts.tumblr.com/) for being my beta and also for enabling me. Title is from the xx's "[Night Time](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYZ8MjRe9K4)".

I.

“You know,” Keith says dryly, “I’m not sure how necessary blindfolds are when it’s pitch dark outside. Seems kind of redundant.”

He touches a hand to the fabric covering his eyes, a little irritated but not terribly so. He can feel the cool wind caressing his hair, and he can hear the gentle hum of the hover car under him as they travel across a landscape he cannot see. It’s hard to stay too mad whenever he’s on this thing. Which is probably exactly what Shiro intended, knowing him.

“It’s symbolic,” Shiro intones from somewhere in front of him, presumably – one would hope, anyway – at the helm of the car. “And a surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” Keith says, but it comes out teasing, no real bite to it. Just as well, because it’s a bit of a strong statement. At worst, he’s indifferent.

“I’m sorry,” Shiro says. To his credit, he sounds like he means it. “You could have said no.”

“Why would I?” Keith shrugs. “I don’t hate you.”

Silence for a moment. Keith tries to imagine what Shiro’s face might look like. Is he surprised? Well, let him be. Keith doesn’t know why Shiro should be surprised, at this point, that he trusts him.

“That’s good,” Shiro says, after a bit. “Otherwise, this would be kind of pointless.”

“What, kidnapping me in the middle of the night?”

Shiro makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snort. “I did ask,” he says. “Pretty nicely, I might add.”

“Yeah,” Keith says, and he can feel himself smiling, despite the bizarre circumstances. It’s a bit of a useless gesture – Shiro will never see it, whether that be because he’s too focused on the path in front of him or because it’s too dark – but still, not one he really has the power or the inclination to stop. “You did.”

The hover car begins to slow, then. He can feel it from the way his body pitches forward, ever so slightly. It bobs, dips a little under Shiro’s weight, as he gets off. “Need some help?” Shiro says, voice close enough for him to be next to Keith now. Wordlessly, Keith holds his hand out, and says nothing when Shiro grabs it.

As Keith jumps down to the ground, he takes ahold of the blindfold and pulls it off. Blinking at his surroundings, he has just enough time to register they’re in a part of the desert he doesn’t recognize before he catches sight of the night sky above them, and stares.

“Whoa,” he says, not quite able to hold the stupid-sounding word back. He supposes there’s no helping it. He grew up among skyscrapers, the night sky a hazy orange from all the light pollution. He could probably count the number of stars he’s seen his whole life on one hand.

This, though. Thousands upon millions of pinpricks of light streaked across an abyss of a sky, an infinity he could never hope to quantify. He tips his head back, drunk on the sight of stars that stretches beyond a horizon he can barely see, and for a dizzying moment, there’s nothing between him and the universe but the sky itself.

They’re still holding hands. Shiro squeezes, enough of a touch for Keith to tear his gaze away from the starlight and glance at him. His eyes gleam dimly in the dark. “There’s a cropping of rock, back here,” he says quietly. “We can sit, if you want.”

Silently, Keith nods. Shiro releases his hand, then, but keeps them close as they walk toward the shadowy rock. They sit, unmeasured distance between them, but close enough for Shiro to put his hand between them, and for Keith to feel brave enough to touch it with the side of his palm. He lets himself lean back against the rough stone, and resists the urge to pull his jacket around him against the cold desert night air.

“You come out here often?” Keith says, eyes tracing over the stars above them.

He can practically feel Shiro smiling. “Yeah, actually,” he says. “It’s nice here. Quiet, when you want to get away from everything for a while.”

For the briefest of moments, Keith lets himself envision Shiro sitting here alone, staring at faraway galaxies. Would he dream of different worlds? Would he wonder what he might find at the edge of the universe? Or would he just let the silence soak him up, in his thoughts and in the world around him?

“This is kind of like your spot, then,” Keith says, throat inexplicably tight.

“Well. Yours, now, too.” Keith can hardly believe it; is that what Shiro sounds like when he feels bashful? “Figured I might as well give it to you, before it’s too late.”

Ah, yes. That’s right. Amazingly, Keith had almost gone an entire hour without thinking of deadlines.

“You’re bad at giving presents,” Keith says, trying to make his voice light in a way he does not feel. “How am I supposed to know how to get here if I spent the whole way blindfolded?”

Shiro laughs, softly. “I’ll give you a map. I’ve programmed it into the hover car. Which I also want you to look after, coincidentally. While I’m gone.”

Keith’s heart clenches, frustratingly unbidden. Shiro is not dying, he thinks viciously. What right does he have to sound like that, like he’s reading off a will?

“The mission’s only supposed to be a year,” he states, keeping his gaze stubbornly forward.

“I’m a careful man,” Shiro says, uncharacteristic humor in his voice. Keith lets himself smile at that, too, despite himself. What an understatement.

And just like that, his private anger is gone almost as quickly as it came. It has the tendency to do that, around Shiro. Keith can’t even bring himself to get annoyed about it.

“Thanks for bringing me out here,” Keith says. “It’s nice. Really.”

“Yeah?” Keith allows himself to glance at Shiro, just managing to catch a glimpse of a smile as it flickers across his face. “I’m glad.”

The silence that follows is comfortable, often inhabited between them. Keith lets his attention wander back toward the stars, nameless to him but all beautiful, in their own right. They look impossibly tiny from here, and numerous, though on the most logical of levels he knows he’ll never stumble on anything that big or far away. Not like others he could name.

A year. Keith can do a year. He’s lived this long on his own, hasn’t he?

“You know,” Shiro says, pulling Keith sharply away from his thoughts, “part of me can’t help but worry, somehow.”

Keith draws his eyebrows together. “About the mission?”

“Sounds silly, doesn’t it?” Shiro shakes his head. “But I can’t help it. So much is at stake.”

“It’s not silly.” Keith glances toward the sky. “You’ll be among the stars, tomorrow. For real. Not often that happens to someone, you know? There’s still so much we don’t know about them.”

“Tomorrow.” Shiro sighs. It’s a small noise. Keith decides he hates it, hates how pathetic it sounds, how resigned.

Hates that Shiro would ever feel small enough to make it.

“Shiro,” he says, fiercely, because he wants him to hear this, _needs_ him to, “they chose you for a reason.”

Not bothering to fight back the impulse, Keith covers Shiro’s hand with his, warm edges of knuckles pressing into his palm. Daringly, he lets his thumb swipe over Shiro’s skin, once, twice. Shiro’s eyes flutter closed; he breathes.

And Keith does not say, _I’ll miss you_ , or, _be careful out there_.

He says, “You’ll come back.”

He does not say it like a question. He does not let the sentence turn into one. They are his own gift to Shiro, an anchoring point for the both of them. Anchors need not be marred by doubt.

“Yeah,” Shiro says, the word on an exhale. “One day.”

-

II.

After over a year of living on his own, being constantly surrounded by people who are each loud and energetic in their own way is almost shocking.

It’s more than that, really. A shock implies a sort of impermanence, a sharp pain that only lasts for a short while. Living around people again is surprising, and overwhelming, and _exhausting_. All of the time.

He wonders if the others notice when he breaks off from the rest of them. He tries to be surreptitious about it, certainly. They’ve spent enough time together in the Castle that he actually doesn’t really mind their company anymore. But it gets to be a little much, sometimes. Sometimes, he feels the need for solitude like heartache.

Sometimes, he finds himself in some estranged, remote part of the Castle, and looks out the window.

The best thing about living in outer space, Keith figures, is that if you find a decent enough vantage point, you can stare at the stars any time of the day.

The day they return to the Castle after their mission on Balmera, even Keith can tell they’re all tired. He tries not to show it on his face, but he knows he feels it too. It was a fulfilling mission, certainly. He’s never seen anything like those crystals. But he’d be stupid not to admit it took a lot out of him, anyway.

At the soonest opportunity, mumbling some unconvincing platitudes and shoving his hands in his pockets, he breaks away, too exhausted to care about being obvious, and lets himself walk. He wants to tell himself he doesn’t care where he’s going, that all he wants to do is wander the entire Castle to his heart’s content, but he knows that won’t fool anyone, least of all himself. He knows exactly where he’s going.

When he finds it, he sinks against the wall until he hits the floor, and stares straight ahead. It’s a pretty decently sized window that’s in front of him, stretching almost from floor to ceiling. If he squints he can almost pretend that the glass isn’t there. Or that he might touch the galaxies themselves, one day.

It’s then that he registers the sound of footsteps. Firm, and even. He does not need to look to know who followed him.

He could be annoyed, maybe, or angry. Mostly, he just feels glad.

“So this is where you’ve been sneaking off to,” Shiro says as he approaches, grinning down at Keith.

Keith smiles back, tentatively. “My spot,” he says.

Shiro hums tunelessly. “Mind if I join you?”

Keith shrugs. “It could be your spot, too,” he says, casually, as if saying the words doesn’t strike a chord somewhere deep inside him, in a place he tried and failed to bury in a past life. “If you wanted.”

The look on Shiro’s face, now, is inscrutable. Keith doesn’t try to guess what he’s thinking. He’s never been able to, really.

Not that he’d want to. Shiro’s head is his own. Still, what he wouldn’t give to help Shiro understand why Keith would do this, would offer him what peace he could in a time caught between terrors in the future and terrors in the past. What he wouldn’t give to help him through the terror of his own trauma, if only either of them knew how to make sense of it.

A second passes, another. Shiro sinks down next to Keith, and sighs.

“Crazy day, today,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

It’s startling, for a wild moment. Shiro was so calm earlier, so level-headed, it almost didn’t occur to Keith that he could find all that was going on just as overwhelming. But of course he has to be an anchor, when they’re in battle. It was always what he was meant to be.

On the outside, anyway. Keith knows, better than anyone, that there are times he lets himself be human, too.

“Do you ever stop and think about how crazy all of this is?” Keith hazards a glance at Shiro, looks away a heartbeat later. He’s not sure he could ever stare at him for long. It reminds him too much of looking at the sun, something bright and surreal.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, we went from a not-so-merry band of misfits to defenders of the universe in, what, a day? Is that not crazy?”

“I try not to think about it that way.”

“Why not?” How could anyone _not_ think about it that way?

“Because I can’t let myself stop,” Shiro says, simply. “Not for a second.”

Like that, it almost sounds easy.

And maybe Keith gets that. Maybe he gets what it means to chase after your impulses and drown out everything else, because everything else just gets in the way, and sometimes you just can’t afford to slow down, not even a bit. Because if you do, you could lose your chance to actually _do_ something. And what do you have left, if you can’t do anything at all?

“Do you remember the night before you went to Kerberos?” Keith says, keeping his eyes forward. It’s not that he’s afraid to look at Shiro; he’s not. He just knows what he looks like right now, and what he looks like right now is not something he wants Shiro – anyone, really – to see.

Then again, maybe he is afraid. It’s been so long since he last allowed himself to believe they might sit next to each other once again, let alone have it actually happen. Half the time, it barely feels real, the sight and the sound of Shiro next to him and breathing and _alive_. Half the time, it feels like a dream, some transparent miracle he could wake up from any time if he’s not careful.

He feels something nudge against his hand, then. It takes all of Keith’s self-control not to stiffen at the touch, familiar and strange all at once. And yet it’s what he needed somehow. Shiro is not a dream.

“Yeah, I remember,” Shiro says. His voice is so soft it makes something inside Keith ache, irritatingly. “We looked at the stars. Just like this.”

“Not just like this,” Keith says.

He makes the mistake of looking at Shiro right then, right as his face bursts into a smile that twists at Keith’s heart and freezes his breath in his lungs. It’s a small one, curling at the corners of his mouth tentatively like it might disappear any second now, and Keith knows, even as it pains him how desperate the thought is, that he would do anything to cling to something so fragile.

“What do you mean?” Shiro says. And god, he’s so gentle with his words it’s almost unbearable. Keith can barely stand the thought of him.

But it was always like this between them, wasn’t it? And there was a time he wondered why Shiro thought he deserved it. Now, it just makes him feel the time they spent apart sharply, each second lost scraping across his insides. He’s gone so long without this, this breakable thing between them; he almost forgot what it was like to live with it.

“I mean, for one,” Keith says, clearing his throat, “we’re on a spaceship that doubles as a castle hurtling through outer space. I’d say that’s a pretty big change of scenery.”

Shiro’s smile widens, just a little.

“And – “

Keith hesitates, for a moment grasping for words, all of the ones that come to mind inadequate. In a burst of sudden inspiration, he holds his hand out toward the window, splays his fingers outward and squints at the stars he can see between the gaps. For a moment, he almost deludes himself into thinking he can reach them.

“They feel so far away up here,” he says.

Shiro huffs a laugh, a short, breathless thing. Like he’s trying to hold it in, or like he doesn’t want to let it go. Same thing, really. But different.

“What’s so funny?” Keith says, knocking their shoulders together gently.

“It’s stupid,” Shiro says, shaking his head, not quite managing to fight back a smile.

“Nothing you say is stupid,” Keith says without really thinking about it, and though he means it he can feel his cheeks warm. Maybe _he’s_ the stupid one.

The corners of Shiro’s eyes crinkle, humor sparking behind his gaze. And maybe Keith’s missed this, missed how light Shiro used to be, like the breeze. And maybe he doesn’t have to anymore.

“I was just thinking, right when you said that,” Shiro says, his voice low, “that they’ve never felt so close.”

Keith stares at him, speechless; and Shiro meets his gaze, fearlessly but quietly, the way he always was, the way they’ve always been.

“I guess you’re right,” Keith says finally. He should look away now, probably. He doesn’t.

Shiro doesn’t, either. He just presses their hands closer together, and smiles.


End file.
